Boris Scraps Londoner for Trees

Boris Johnson will announce later today that he is scrapping The Londoner newspaper currently distributed to all households in London on behalf of the Mayor.

The Mayor will announce that the estimated £2.9 million cost of the paper will be diverted to other projects including the planting of 10,000 new street trees on London streets. Later this morning Mr Johnson is expected to attend a planting ceremony in Brixton organised by Trees for Cities.

In a statement issued Monday evening Mayor Johnson said “I believe that as many areas as possible should enjoy the many advantages that street trees bring. So today I have taken the decision to cut unnecessary funding of the Mayor’s personal publicity budget to plant 10,000 street trees by the end of my first term.”

“Trees improve the street environment in which Londoners live and work so I will do all I can to save the trees we have and campaign for more trees to protect London’s open spaces.”

However there are fears that scrapping The Londoner could inadvertently aid the BNP. The Greater London Authority currently has a registered trademark for the term covering newsletters distributed by the Mayor. If the Authority ceases to use the mark for the registered services it could eventually be removed from the register of trademarks.

In February the Authority threatened the BNP with a trademark infringement lawsuit after the party was found to be distributing leaflets under the same name. If the mark were to be struck off or ceased to be used such action would become impossible.

The planting of the extra trees was a manifesto commitment by Mayor Johnson and Londoners will be given the opportunity to vote via the london.gov.uk website for where the trees should be planted.

Related

Comments

This tree proposal isn’t all it seems. Ken Livingstone had committed to planting 600,000 new trees by 2012 and had already planted 400,000. Boris pledge to only plant 10,000 of the 600,000 is therefore a reduction in 98% of the amount of trees planted. It’s cleverly framed with the announcement of the scrapping of the Londoner, but it hides the fact that Boris will be planting substantially fewer trees than would have been the case.

And it certainly doesn’t discriminate against the poorer areas of London, in which internet connections are not exactly found in every home, but some trees might at least help brighten up the place. Hmm…

I haven’t seen any evidence that this is the case. And if it is, why is he not talking about planting 610,000 more trees and giving people the choice of where to plant those 610,000? He has at no point made a pledge that I’ve seen, to match Livingstone’s commitment and to add 10,000 to it. All he has said is that he will plant 10,000.

Leaving aside the tree issue, the reality is that The Londoner ended up as a form of propaganda costing several million pounds a year, not as a way of offering undiluted information to Londoners. It was ill disguised propaganda with the use of emotive headlines and sailed close to the legal wind imho. As a magazine publisher by background, I took particular issue when I was a London Assembly member with the attempts to disguise the costs. In great Enron syle, the contributions from other parts of the GLA family (like the MPA or LDA) were listed is “income”!! The rag had to go (sorry, InterestedLondoner). However, the Mayor’s opponents will be looking (I hope) at the overall spend on publicity, “getting the message across”, publications etc…not just on this totemic publication. Why not lay a marker down now for the future to check the lists of spending decisions and staff appointments to see whether the new Mayor is saving a few million here but in future spending an enormous amount more on some other form of “information provision”…

Camden High Street seriously needs some and were promised 10 years ago. Trees help to screen out pollution. Measured at Mornington Crescent end it is one of the most polluted areas in Europe! A handful (5 ish) of trees were planted – one is very stunted and one died. Camden Council did not really want them as (in truly ‘Little Britain’ attitude)they claimed that the 14 vile cctv cameras (whose film we now know the police cannot be bothered going through)would have their site lines obscured!

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